Sacrifice by RubbyKK
by iDanielHilton
Summary: "Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable."   William Shakespeare.
1. Prelude: A New Beginning

_***Let me first start off by saying, I, Teddy1221, did NOT write this fanfic. My RL best friend RubbyKK is unable to publish this story to her page due to personal reasons. I will show her every SINGLE review, so be sure to post a lot. All credit for this story goes to her. **_

_I'll put the standard disclaimer in this chapter because it is required and I find putting it in each chapter to be a bit like beating a dead horse: Pointless. I know who I a,m and who I'm not. Who I am is me and who I'm not is him. In layman's terms: I don't own it._

_I'd also like to give props to someone who desserves it: my lovely beta Jedi Princess Jainakin for attempting to sort out my horrible spelling and grammar. _

_This idea has been in my head, in some way shape or form for at least three years and I have just now gotten around to it. Things really got kicked into high gear when I was exposed to a certain part of the Extended Universe and found a character I fell in love with. I won't mention just which one I'm talking about because it is a surprise for later._

_I know the whole triplet bit has been done before but this one's a little different. There was simply no way I could put Luke or Leia in the same situations and have the same reactions to those situations and not have them be out of character, so I created my own._

_Lormé is the one character I have created for fan fiction that actually isn't perfect. She doesn't know everything and she doesn't have everything go her way. In fact, it's quite the opposite. She is more real than I, being the introverted recluse that I am, could ever be. _

_This story was designed for the sequel. I am usually not one to pull a Lucas, although I do bow to his superior creativity and all-around genius, and give you the ending of the story before I write the beginning, nor am i one to put an entire fic's worth of backstory into a few paragraphs explanation like some authors. Enjoy._

Sacrifice

Prelude

A New Beginning

**"Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable." **

**William Shakespeare**

The Mos Eisley spaceport had always been a hub of the vilest beings in the galaxy. It was for this reason, almost solely, that the man now known as Old Ben Kenobi found himself racing towards the motley collection of mud brick and durasteel buildings. It was not a place to leave a child alone, even one as special as Lormé.

Although Ben had never met the child, he knew her to be extraordinary. According to her mother, who was not one to unduly embellish a tale, the child was intelligent as well as relatively well-behaved, if not at times a little overly stubborn. The only fault that could be found in the child was not of her own design.

Being Force sensitive, as she happened to be, was one of the biggest faults someone could have in this day and age. Those who possessed the gift were hunted down and slaughtered, when less than a decade-and-a-half ago they would have been trained and revered, regarded as powerful beings and guardians of light and goodness. It had taken a lot of resources to ensure that her power did not fall into the wrong hands.

The old hermit's rambling thoughts were cut short as he spotted the girl from across the landing bay. She stood out from the rest of the people bustling about, not only in dress but also in mannerisms. Lormé simply sat on one of her three trunks and let her feet dangle. Her expression was the exact same one Anakin used to wear when he was lost and confused.

Ben's heart gave a little lurch as he permitted himself to find other similarities between this girl and his fallen apprentice. Her angular face, thick dark blonde curls, and fathomless blue eyes betrayed her identity as one of Anakin Skywalker's children.

"Lormé?" he whispered as he put his hand on her shoulder. "Come, child." He did not use his usual lighthearted tone for the circumstances that had brought her to this barrern dust ball of a planet were anything but lighthearted.

Without a word the child got up and began collecting her things. She grabbed one trunk and reached for another before realizing that she already had her hands quite full. When Ben reached for the remaining two, she immediately sat the one she was carrying down and grabbed one in particular from the old man's hands. The gesture was more then a little rude but it was obvious to anyone that the trunk contained something very precious to her.

The speeder ride back to Ben's home was a quiet one. He didn't know what to say to her just as he didn't know what to say to Anakin all those years ago when he had lost his mother. Lormé simply stared out the window at the endless sea of sand. Although she enjoyed seeing new places she hated Taooine. The sand alone was a rough annoyance she would rather not have had to deal with.

"Is this temporary?" she asked in an emotionless tone that gave little away in terms of her thoughts.

"I hope not. It would be nice to stay in one place for a while." The child said little else and Ben found himself completely torn. He knew that the arrangement could only be temporary at best. To have two of the Skywalker triplets in the same area along with a Jedi Master was simply too much of a beacon, but the child's manner made it clear that she needed him and wouldn't abandoning her now just be another way to fail Anakin all over again? This was definitely something he would have to discuss with Qui-Gon.

It took the dreary duo several hours to get back to Ben's small hut. By the time they had safely gotten indoors the sun was just past setting. Although Lormé was tired enough to go directly to bed, she didn't make so much as a move towards the only bed in the hermit's small quarters. To do so would have been presumptuous and rude, and if their was one thing her mother had taught her, it was how to act in polite society.

"I'm sorry about the accommodations. Your call came so suddenly and I had no time to prepare." The girl had only contacted him well after she had embarked on her journey to the desert planet. On the surface, it seemed like a rash move. What would the child have done if he had not been here?

Little did he know that Lormé was no where near as rash has her father had been. In fact, despite sometimes appearing the contrary, she left few things completely to chance. What she could not plain she trusted to the Force. Although she was nowhere as attuned to it as she would have been with training, she knew enough to trust it when it whispered its sweet melody in her ear.

Ben Kenobi had been the one her mother had trusted and he was the one she would stay with. If she would have given him the option, he would have pawned her off on someone else, so she didn't give him the opportunity to say no.

"Ben?" She asked after a moment, pausing to get some form of acknowledgement from him.

"You're a Jedi, aren't you?" Although the question caught him off guard, he managed to hide it with an amused smile. Padmé had confided to him on more than one occasion that the child was far more observant than what was good for her and that Lormé had a peculiar habit of not revealing exactly how much she knew or deduced.

"Oh…am I? What makes you think so?" He asked with a stroke of his beard. He never got a verbal answer. The doll-like child just walked over to one of her trunks, the same one she had been so very adamant about carrying herself, and opened it.

Laying on top of numerous bits of mechanical junk and leather-bound ledgers were hollo-recordings and news clippings from the time of the Clone Wars, all of which were about the "Hero-With-No-Fear" and "The Negotiator" or a certain former Nubian child-queen-turned-senator. These were contraband carefully collected over years of junk shop sales and stolen from Imperial libraries across the galaxy.

"And if I am?"

Her face remained almost as expressionless as before. It was clear through the Force that the death of her mother had left a gaping void in the girl's heart. The fact that she hadn't sought to fill it with hatred as her father did was a blessing in and of its self, but that didn't make it any less difficult to see her face so blank and lifeless.

"I want to be one, like him. Like my father."

Ben couldn't help but shiver at her ominous words. She was not the first youngling to make that claim but she actually had the potential. She and her unknown siblings could very well be the only beings to pull this galaxy out of darkness. Or, they could cast everyone so far into the abyss that not one soul could return.


	2. Chapter One: Luke

Sacrifice

Chapter One:

Luke

"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?"

Albert Einstein

Unlike most of the children in his class Luke liked school. The lessons only served as a constant reminder that there was more to the galaxy than this dusty rock. As he listened to the teacher's talk about the beauty of other worlds and of a life of anything other than a moisture farmer, he had hope. It was his dream to leave this place. It was not hard for the boy to imagine himself among the stars. He was often eager to learn. Every time he learned of a new place out there the stars would look a little brighter that night.

Today on the other hand, was a day in which he had been tempted to play hooky. In fact he even went as far as faking being sick but his aunt had seen through the ruse. Perhaps the fact that he could count on one hand the number of times he has truly been sick was what gave the truth away, or perhaps Aunt Beru had simply seen it coming. Either way, he had been caught.

Luke hated Parents' Day. Every year, each student had to make a presentation about their family. No parents themselves ever attended, for they were all too busy, but it was still a prominent reminder of what he lacked. Beru understood, Luke somehow knew, that to make him go would be like rubbing sand into an open, gapping wound. Owen didn't care or, more likely, was simply oblivious. He did not understand how someone could miss something he never had so much, and, because in the Lars household Owen had the final say, Luke rarely got a viable response to questions about his family.

The stuffy adobe brick building had been built with no windows in a failed attempt to keep out the scorching heat of the Tatooine desert. Instead of keeping the heat out it wound up only offering bored children no chance of escape. As Luke listened to the prattling of Tomax Balbri, he couldn't help but feel an odd sense of excitement. It was almost as if he knew about some special surprise that not even the teacher was privy to.

"Miss Saar?" The principal's voice drew Luke out of his thoughts. It was odd for Mr. Parsa to be outside of his own classroom. On top of his duties as the principal he also taught a class of the top three levels. The kids in that class were notoriously bad, so disciplining them and making sure they learned _something _took up most of the man's time. In fact it took up so much of his time that many of the other children didn't recognize the man as the principle.

"This is Lormé Thule and she will be joining your class." There was something familiar about the girl the old man presented, something Luke couldn't place. It was like the vague impression a dream leaves someone when woken. He knew he had never seen her before. He would remember if he had. With her sharp features, striking blue eyes, and almost ankle length curls, she was not one easily forgotten.

After Mr. Parsa left, Miss Saar wasted no time accosting the girl for information. The excitement in the room was almost tangible. It was so rare that someone actually moved to Tatooine; usually people went in the opposite direction.

"So Lormé, where did you live before Anchorhead?" Miss Saar asked.

Everyone knew that she was almost as interested in other planets as Luke was. A few years ago, when she herself had been a student, Rakka Saar had been given a full scholarship to a university on a neighboring planet. For a long time she had been the talk of the town. So few opportunities like that were offered. It had almost broken the girls heart to have to turn the offer down when her mother had gotten sick. Now, she was reduced to living vicariously through others with knowledge of places beyond the twin suns and sands of Tatooine.

"A lot of places." The new girl said as if that simple statement answered everything. The girl's voice was stoic and monotone, making her seem aloof and perhaps a little snobbish. Luke didn't think that was the case though. To him, Lormé's mask was easy to see through. He instinctually knew that it was all a façade used to hide the fact that the blue-eyed little girl was in pain, that she was grieving for something deeply loved.

"Naboo, Bespin, Nar Shaddaa, and a whole bunch of others that I can't really remember," Lormé elaborated when it became clear that the teacher would not drop the intrigue no matter how much the girl wished she would. Not only was it picking at old wounds, wounds she would rather let heal rather than continuing to allowing them to fester. Couldn't that horrible woman see that? Wasn't it obvious?

"Why did you move so often?" The teacher asked, entirely to obtuse for a teacher.

"My mother went where the situation was most promising." It wasn't a lie as much as an omission of facts; a trait she had picked up from her ex-politician of a mother. Lormé herself never flat out lied no matter the situation, but she rarely completely told the complete truth unless she had to or completely trusted the other person. It was not a habit born out of some malicious intent, rather it was the simple fact that Lormé liked her secrets.

"Well today we're giving presentations on our families. Would you like to go ahead and give yours since you are already at the front of the class? It doesn't have to be anything fancy, just a few little words." The teacher spoke as if she were included in the 'we' she spoke of but Lormé sincerely doubted that the sandy-haired woman had shared her own sorrows with those to whom it was of no concern. It was clear that it wasn't exactly the request it was made out to be.

"My father was a warrior who died before I was born, or perhaps, just after. My mother took care of me alone and when she got sick and died a couple of months ago, I came here to live with my Uncle Ben." The presentation was short and to the point but it worked. The teacher picked up on the note of bitterness in the girl's voice and made no comment. The other children, however weren't as kind.

"Ben Kenobi?" A big gruff bully of a boy named Klyn Tainer asked. "My dad says he's just a crazy old wizard."

Luke's uncle had often said the exact same thing but Luke knew better than to repeat in front of the man's family. Even with his uncle's complete dislike of the man, Luke would have been deeply punished for such rudeness, and rightly so.

The comment sent the first sign of emotion detectable by everybody breaking through the girl's face. Her eyes narrowed and darkened while her mouth puckered ever so slightly. There was something dangerous about her face that warned anyone with even a tiny bit more sense than Tainer that this girl, like a Sarlacc, was not one to be messed with despite the relatively harmless exterior. For a moment, she looked as if she might attack the boy but she didn't, at least physically.

"What a pity. You inherit your parent's options as if they where heirlooms. Are you u too daft to form your own?" Luke could tell by her choice of words that what ever world she had lived on before had obviously had better schools. And, although he didn't know what her words meant exactly, he was able to get a rough idea.

"What?" Klyn said confused,causing Lormé's face to contort into a vicious grin.

"I see I need to rephrase myself. I said that you only think what your parents tell you to because you are simply too stupid to form your own thoughts."

Paying her quarry's red sputtering face little attention, she turned to the teacher and asked in her most sincere voice if she may take her seat. Hopping to avoid more trouble, Miss Saar granted the request by pointing to an open desk on the left side of the class room, near Luke. Conicidenitly, the seat by Luke was the furthest away from the insulted boy.

Luke was impressed with the girl now sitting beside him. Klyn was the class bully and few kids, even the older ones, had the guts to stand up to him. There was no way she could have known of the trouble she had unleashed, but Luke doubted it would have made any difference if she had.

As the bully himself got up to brag about how his father was the richest junk dealer on this side of Anchorhead, Luke decided that the familiar new girl would be more interesting. She did nothing that explained to him why she seemed so familiar, she did quite the contrary. Lormé simply pulled out a data pad and began to draw.

It was clear that she had more than a little talent. The picture was a very detailed drawing of a man and a woman in a beautiful meadow surrounded by something that Luke only heard about. Waterfalls usually would have dominated the picture with their magnificence, but not in this picture, not with the way it was drawn. This glimpse inside the girl's mind showed the woman in such clear and precise detail, it could rival a holo-photo. But the man and the background weres drawn in a lot less detai, as if they were simply afterthoughts to the otherwise esquisite drawing. It was unclear to the boy if she simply wasn't yet finished or if that was the way she had intended it to be.

"My mother and father." Lormé answered Luke's unasked question without as much as looking up.  
What she didn't say was that this wasn't a drawing from her imagination or even form a photograph. It was a a photo to a time when no holo-cameras where present. A glimpse into a dream. The Force had given her that vision to help her fill in the gaps of her mind, of her history. She had known of her mother as the senator and of her father as the Jedi but not of them as people. As lovers.

"He's dressed funny."

Lormé just looked at the boy for a moment sizing him up. Luke squirmed under her gaze. After a few moments she leaned towards him and whispered something so low he had to strain his ears to hear.

"Can you keep a secret Luke?"

The Force told her to trust him, that she and him were somehow connected. She knew him in some way even though she was sure they had never met. Perhaps they had been friends in a past life, something some religions dictated as a possibility.

"My father was a Jedi." If possible her voice was even softer then before. But Luke had heard her words. He understood what they mean to some degree, but not enough to not ask questions.

"A-" he almost shouted before the teacher cut him off.

"Skywalker!"

Lormé's eyes went wide. She had never been called by that name, even though it was the one she had been born with. Few knew it and even fewer knew how it scared her. If she was discovered… Did she look so much like her father that his features could have been recognized in hers, even on this barren, desolate planet?

"Ma'am?" Luke asked, causing Lormé to turn and look at him. His name was Skywalker too? The name couldn't be all that common. Didn't her mother mention that Tatooine was her father's home planet? Maybe Luke was her cousin or something. But if he was her cousin, than why had she not met him before? It didn't make sense. She had met her cousins on Naboo, albeit briefly, although it happened almost before she could really remember. So, why wouldn't her mother have told her about any others?

"Since you like talking so much why don't you give your presentation?"

Luke sighed. He had been hoping that he would have been forgotten. The young man shook off the shock of his friends' secret if it were actually true. It wasn't likely because everyone knew that Jedi weren't allowed to have children. She must know that, so why would she say that her father was a Jedi if she knew it couldn't be true? He took the walk up to the front slowly and without preamble, he began his presentation.

"My father, Anakin Skywalker, was a navigator on a space freighter," Luke knew no one was actually paying attention to what hesaid, no one ever did. Except this time, someone was. Lormé hung on to his every word, as if a single breath could answer her every question.

"One day he asked my aunt and uncle to watch me for a while so he could finish up his current job. The ship got raided by pirates. He didn't survive." When he finished his taile, he realized that someone had in fact been listening. Lormé sat, her eyes never left him, with her hand silently raised.

"What about your mother?"

The question stopped him in his tracks. Luke was ashamed to admit that he had never really thought of her. Luke's thoughts and wanderings had always been primarily about his father, but Lormé's question had risen his curiosity. Surely she had to be quite a woman for her to have caught his father's attention.

"I don't know." he whispered.

The bell rung, signaling the end of the school day. The sound brought Luke out of his thoughts with a sharp jerk.

"What do we do now?" Lormé asked when the classroom had emptied.

"We go home."

"I mean where do we wait for our families to come collect us?' She retaliated, more than slightly annoyed. If the boy didn't understand what he meant, then he could just tell her. There was no need for him to be annoying.

Luke led her to the front of the school where they were to wait for their families to come and get them. Lormé was surprised to find that the children had no supervision. One would think, given this town's reputation for being a remarkably unsavory place, that they would have been watched closely.

Klyn Tainer, who was standing in a group not far from where Luke and Lormé were standing, decided to take advantage of the free reign. He sauntered over, followed by a few goons and a handful of younglings sensing trouble.

"You know, I don't believe your story. "

Luke couldn't tell what he was playing at, but whatever it was it gave him a bad feeling. Lormé gave Klyn a sidewise glance with a raised brow.

"No, I didn't know, and amazingly, I don't care. You see, I'm not a liar. If you want to convince yourself otherwise, go ahead and try, but it's just going to be a compleat waste of your time." It was clear that little Klyn said would bother her. In that odd, unspeakable way that Luke knew things, he knew that Lormé was used to being the new kid, to being a target, and that she had dealing with idiots down to a science. Unfortunately, Klyn Tainer was out for her blood and he hadn't tasted it yet.

"Your mother was probably a spice-addicted whore who got knocked up by a trick. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if she died of an over dose or some-"

Luke saw what happened almost before it actually happened, but he couldn't stop it. Lormé was just too fast.

Quicker than a nexu, Lormé jumped on Klyn, knocking him to the sandy ground. No one tried to break up the fight; either because they saw it as a form of rare entertainment or because, like Luke, they knew that they could do little to stop it.

For such a small little girl, she had no trouble bringing the bully down. Klyn was easily twice as big and probably several years older than the dainty girl, but the fact didn't seem to faze her. Nothing was going to stop her from turning the creep's face to mush.

Lormé used her knees to hold the arms of her prey down. He was unable to do as much as defend himself from her as she simply proceeded to hit him as hard and as much as she could. From Luke's vantage point, he could see the almost-feral look in her eyes as she continued to hit Klyn. With each strike, her hair flew, giving her a thoroughly wild appearance.

Almost as quick as the fight started, it was ended.. Ben Kenobi, the old hermit, had arrived. When he saw the scene before him, he was horrified. It sent too many memories rushing forward. Anakin had been an angry child and look where it got him. Was his child doomed to the same fate? If that were the truth, if that were her destiny, then Ben would be destroyed as well.

With his green eyes sparkling in an immeasurable depth of sadness, pain, and disappointment, the old Jedi Master pulled his protégé off of the boy. Even encased in his arms she continued to kick and thrash in an attempt to land more blows to her adversary. Eventually, Ben was reduced to literally dragging her by her ear towards the speeder. But the child would not let it bother her. Instead of whining and showing her discomfort, she decided it best to make light of the situation.

"See you tomorrow Luke!" she said her voice calm and even despite the discomfort Kenobi's grip had caused her.

"Tomorrow's Saturday," he replied, more than a little unsure of how to respond.

"Oh well. Monday then." Lormé's demeanor was almost unnervingly nonchalant as she was practically thrown in the speeder. Ben waited until they were well away from any prying eyes or eavesdroppers to stop the speeder. What he had to say was not something that could wait until they were in the privacy of their home and it was not something to be said in the presences of others.

"What did I tell you about anger?" Ben could hardly keep his own anger down. It was unbecoming for a Jedi Master to faultier but what was worse was the fact that he could not place a source to it. Was it the child he was angry at or himself?

"Anger is a path to the dark side," she said as if she were simply repeating something she had heard a million times. "But you don't understand! He desserved it! He called my mother a whore!"

Lormé had been raised better than this. Padmé would have made sure of it. Did the child simply not understand? Ben knew that she was in a lot of pain because of her mother's death, but that was still no excuse for her behavior.

"He said something offensive so he desserved to be beaten until he was unrecognizable?" Lormé was a logical child and the simple way Ben laid out the facts caused her to turn her face towards the parched, barren ground in shame.

"Yes," she muttered, unwilling to admit fault but Ben could see the truth. Lormé knew where her errors lie.

"Lormé, look at me," The old Jedi commanded in a soft, wizened voice that matched his prematurely aged face. When she refused to comply, he placed a finger under her chin and raised it until her eyes were level with his.

"I have already lost one apprentice to the dark side. I could not bear it if it were to happen again." The empathic little girl picked up on the pain and shame in his voice. Unable to hold back her own, her eyes welled until she started to cry. Ben just held the child close trying to take some of her pain away. There was no reason for them to both to blame themselves for his failure. For his disgrace.


	3. Chapter Two: Revelations Through Meditat

Sacrifice

Chapter Two

Revelations Through Meditations

"Some of the best lessons are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom of the future."

Dale Turner

"Padmé, you must understand that the children will not be safe together. They are simply too strong for the emperor not to notice." Obi-Wan Kenobi looked worn and far older than he was. It was as if everything he had cared about had been ripped from his heart and trampled on. The sight was pitiful and almost unnatural. Here was one of the galaxy's strongest men, one of its greatest heroes, looking as if his whole world had collapsed in upon his shoulders and, in fact, it had.

He knew that from the moment he saw the recordings at the temple, he would never be the same. Obi-Wan Kenobi died the moment he saw his brother, his best friend, sell his soul and practically raze the very place he had called home for over a decade. And he was destroyed as thoroughly as Anakin had been on the black beach of glass he had fallen to on Mustafar.

The senator herself looked to be in a similar condition. Instead of her opulent wardrobe and elaborate hairstyles she was dressed in a simple hospital gown with her hair pulled up in a messy bun. It was plain to see that despite the fact she had just given birth she was as dead inside as the Jedi Master himself was and it was likely she would never regain that fire that had been her signature. He knew the only things that kept her sane were the two children she held close to her breast and the one currently still in the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

"I can't split them up. My children are all I have left of him." Obi-Wan looked away at her words. It was true and more than partially Obi-Wan's fault, but that did not make the choice any less necessary. He would have given anything for it to be the contrary but it was simply impossible. The logical person deep within her told her that it was inevitable, that it was the only to save her children.

"Senator Organa has agreed to take one of the girls and we can take Luke to the Lars'. You yourself said that they were good people." The general knew that if he could make her see sense, if he could make her see reason… but a small part of him didn't want her to. He had already taken far too much from the gentle woman.

"Don't you dare use my words against me, Obi-Wan!" The new mother was more than a little annoyed at the fact that they had already divided up her family before they had even brought the suggestion to her. It was an insult.

"If Palpatine finds-" he tried to reason.

"I know!" she snapped wakening one of the infants in her arms. It was bad enough that bastard had gotten to her Ani but the thought of him getting to her children as well was unbearable.

"Shhh, Luke, Shhh." Padmé whispered before burying her face in the child's hair and taking a deep breath. The child smelled so much like his father that she found it comforting.

"Oh Ani, we knew the secret would destroy us, but did it have to destroy them as well?" Padmé whispered so quietly that only the spirits could hear her as tears fell down her cheeks.

Lormé couldn't help but awaken with tears in her eyes. Her mother's grief and sadness had been more than palatable. It was a crushing feeling. No wonder she had been so sad. Her mother had been forced to give up her son. That was something no mother should have to go through.

Now Lormé understood why she had never been enough; why her birthday had always had seemed to be a more somber event then a celebratory one. To Padmé, the day hadn't been a reminder of the day Lormé had been born, it had been a reminder of the day she lost Luke.

It was obvious to the child that she would not get back to sleep tonight. There were simply too many thoughts flying around in her head to allow it. Instead of even trying the impossible, she got up and splashed some water on her face from the little 'fresher behind the kitchen. With that done, she proceeded to the only chair in the living room. The lights were not bothered with, for it would not have been good to wake Ben. She did not want his input on this; it was a matter she had to think on herself and his advice was bound to be about as partial as it gets.

Lormé was angry. How could she not be? Ben Kenobi had been the one to convince her mother to separate her and Luke. He was the reason it took her mother's death to bring her and her brother together. If Lormé's mother had had Luke around as well, maybe she would have had fought the disease harder. Maybe she would still be alive.

Lormé knew she couldn't drive herself insane with all these questions that would probably never be answered. For her own sanity, she had to begin with those questions that could be answered. Why had they been separated? For what reasons would her mother have allowed it? She would not have done it without a very good reason, but what could it be?

The more she thought about all of the questions she had, the more she realized that those particular answers were not going to be easily obtained. She knew Ben would not be forth coming easily and it was clear that Luke was even more in the dark than she was. He thought his father was a navigator on a space freighter. A kerffing space freighter! It was an insult that was so ridiculous, Lormé could barely imagine it actually fooling someone. And mom! He didn't even know her names.

Lormé called a small metallic sphere from the display table into her hands. She needed to keep her hands busy; it helped her clear her mind. The Force hummed around the trinket as she pushed and pulled against it, weaving it through her splayed fingers as if she were playing some odd version of cat's cradle. The action helped the child organize her thoughts.

Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Naberrie Amidala Skywalker had been two of the brightest forces of good in the galaxy. One had been a Jedi credited with almost single-handedly winning the Clone Wars and the other was a senator from a small planet with a big reputation for being incorruptible and unbreakable. How could the galaxy be so messed up that these heroes were vilified to the point of forcing their children to be separated and told little about their parents?

"The Force is not to be used for such trivial task." Ben chided gently from the bed. Lormé stared at him for a few seconds in an attempt to read the old man's face. Was the general to be trusted or forgiven?

There was only one thing in her life that Lormé could trust that had never steered her wrong. Now that her mother was gone, it was the only thing left. What she now knew to be the Force was telling her to trust him and to forgive him. Whatever he had or had not done in the past was already weighing heavily on his heart. Even without the Force, it wasn't too hard to see that something weighed heavily on the old man's conscious.

"It helps me think." After spending the entire school-free harvest season training Lormé in the Jedi arts, Ben Kenobi was weary of the child. She had an almost unnatural gift for shielding her thoughts. Her mental defenses already rivaled those of almost any Jedi or Sith in the archives. That coupled with the politician's mask she inherited from her mother and the show she put on at school made it impossible to gauge just how close to the dark side the child was.

"Thinking, oh, about what?" Ben asked, never moving from his place on the edge of his bed.  
Because not a soul had touched the light, it was impossible for him to see much of what little expression the child showed.

"Dreams." She answered. What little light was available form the moonlight streaming through the window was dancing off the sphere as it swayed. The metallic surface then reflected the light back on her face, casting an eerie glow on the conversation.

"What kinds of dreams?" Dreams had been the downfall of Anakin so Ben knew that if Lormé was having them as well…

"The kind you have when you sleep." Lormé made it clear that she would not give the old general any more information on the matter. She may have decided to forgive and maybe even trust him, but she hadn't decided to confide in him just yet. He hadn't earned that. This was her secret and it was her choice about what to do with it. It was her choice when and how she told Luke about it and she would not hand that choice over to Ben Kenobi, the very man who forced it to be a secret in the first place.

"Go back to sleep Obi-Wan. I may not be able to go back to sleep but that doesn't mean you need to go with out as well. Besides, it's not healthy for a man of your years to be sleep deprived."

The girl's gentle teasing reminded Ben a bit too much of the ghost which haunted his life. It was too easy for him to see Lormé as a miniature version of her father. If Ben could do right by her could it make up for his failure to Anakin?

"I've been working on little sleep since well before you were born. I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. Come, we might as well get started with some exercises."

"But Ben, it's only 0400!" it was so rare to hear the child whine. The sound was slight, lightly comforting to the old man for it proved that the unreadable child from whom he got so many mixed messages was truly a child and not some specter sent to torment him with a constant reminder of a past he was already damned never to forget.

"We'll start with meditation then." Ben acted as if that was supposed to be some sort of condolence to the child.

Lormé sat crossed legged on the cold concrete floor. The lights had yet to be turned on, so the dark came as a blessing. Padawans were often taught to meditate in the dark in an attempt to steer them away from distraction.

"Clear your mind. Feel only the Force. Let it fill you. Do not be distracted,"Ben coached.

"Speaking of distractions…" Lormé muttered without as much as opening her eyes or turning her head. Ben got the message, so he simply stopped and began meditating himself.

After Ben's distraction ended it did not take her long to block everything else out. Time began to have less and less meaning. The air around her began to thin and thicken at the same time but not uncomfortably so. Within minutes - although it very well could have been much longer or even instantaneous - the air felt almost the same constancy as her body. It was almost like being a slug in water, she imagined. Existing with only a thin membrane keeping her insides from drifting away.

Lormé could feel everything around her. Every grain of sand, every life form was almost an extension of herself. She could feel every heartbeat and every breath taken for kilometers. The Force did not discriminate. The life of a Hutt contributed just as much as a human, even if the contribution was generally more vile.

The Force pulsed and pulled as she explored. Like the wind through a forest, Ben's voice whispered in her ear. It told her she was straying too far into the depths; if she didn't find her way closer to shore she would soon be lost forever, but she wasn't ready to come out yet.

She examined the Force around her and found a small maelstrom of energy. Like a miniature whirlpool, it pulled her closer and closer until Lormé was unable to escape it's magnetism. Deep down though, she did not want to escape, whether from a perverse sense of curiosity or an innate knowing that it was the will of the Force that she be swallowed.

When the storm settled, Lormé found herself on some unknown world. She was still somehow within the Force thought, for she could feel that her corporeal body was back on Tatooine. The air was thick and rather humid and there was an aura of celebration that enveloped the area except for the room that she was in.

It was a bare room furnished only with a cot and something told Lormé that it was used as a makeshift prison. Wherever the Force had taken her, it was obviously a place that hadn't expected visitors.

Laying on the cot with her hands folded behind her head was a young woman of about twenty. Something told Lormé that she should recognize her, but for some odd reason she couldn't place where their paths might have had crossed. Her sparse black hair was cropped short and all brushed over to one side of her face and her blue eyes showed a sadness so deep, so profound, that Lormé felt that it would be easier to get sucked into them than it would be in the maelstrom.

As the girl sat there starring up at the stone ceiling, four people walked in without preamble. Lormé thought it more than a little rude that they wouldn't even knock, even if she was their prisoner. There was such a thing as common decency or at least there was supposed to be. The girl apparently thought the same thing by the annoyed way she turned her head to face the intruders.

Four people stood in the doorway, two of which Lormé could easily recognize. The middle-aged humans were senators that had helped her mother while in hiding. The young man and old drunk who accompanied Senators' Mon Mothma and Bail Organa were completely unfamiliar to Lormé.

The drunk had bandages over his eyes and the smell of alcohol clung to him like slime on a Hutt. The young man was muscular, scarred, and his hair was shaven to almost a buzz cut. That look would have given off the impression of a bounty hunter had it not been for the lightsaber that hung from his belt. A Jedi? But wasn't Ben supposed to be the last?

"So have you decided what to do with me yet?" The black-haired girl asked, her voice lased with the barest undertones of sarcasm and bitterness.

"We don't even know your side of the story, Kurbani." Mothma replied, slightly offended that the younger woman would assume so little of her.

"Look it's obvious that some people here know more about me than others," Kurbani said sitting up. She shot a meaningful glance at both the Jedi and Senator Organa as though they were the ones she was speaking to. "But does that mean that I must lay myself bare before you? I've sacrificed my happiness and possibly my soul to keep things secret. You can keep me here forever if it tickles your fancy, because frankly, I've had worse accommodations. But you are not getting a word from me." With her piece said, Kurbani leaned back against the cold stone and tilted her head up to continue looking at the ceiling.

"Do you hate him that much? Is that why you snuck into the battle, to kill him?" The Jedi asked and Kurbani found something about what he said funny, for she almost doubled over with laughter.

"Hate him? Never as much as you Starkiller. Never as much as you."

"It's Galen now," he said rather irritably. Lormé found it interesting that a Jedi wouldn't actually deny that he hated someone. Weren't Jedi supposed to be pacifists?

"And I prefer Lormé or just plain Lor, but whatever." She muttered before looking at Senator Organa. Lormé's eyes widened. This was a moment in the future. This was her.

"My mother trusted you Senator, obviously more than most, so tell me, do you trust those in this room? Would you feel comfortable sleeping at night knowing that they know your deepest, darkest secret?" The words were straight-forward but Lormé knew there were layers upon layers of innuendos. Kurbani knew more than she was letting on and Organa knew it. His answer could force his own secrets out onto the table.

He took a moment to think his answer through until he could answer with absolute certainty.

"Yes." She nodded.

"Very well then. The reason I snuck out, stole an X-wing, and joined the battle when I was supposed to consider myself a prisoner, was to protect my brother." She said it as if it answered everything. Simple and to the point.

"Your brother?" The Jedi asked dumbstruck. It was almost as if he found the thought of her having a sibling to be incomprehensible. He was not the only one who reacted in that manner. In fact only Senator Organa didn't seem surprised at the revelation.

"Luke. You sent him and the rest of those pilots on a suicide mission. I knew he was a good pilot but I couldn't risk it." Galen's face hardened as if something she said was incredibly insensitive but he didn't call her out on it.

"Luke? You mean Skywalker?" Mon Mothma asked and it didn't even take a moment for her to put two and two together "But that would mean-" She whispered in a shocked way that told everyone around her that some idea she had held close had been shattered.

"Yeah and he will never know. I don't care what I have to do, but I will make sure Luke will never know that we are related by even the slightest degree."

And with that passionate declaration, the edges of the world blurred and warped. Someone was wakening Lormé from her meditations. It was an abrupt exit but when she regained consciousness, she knew she had a lot to think on.

Just why was she a prisoner and who were the rest of the people there? Why did that lady call the future Lormé Lady Kurbani? She knew that the word was one used by the Ajji people, who were from a small backwater world, to describe a warrior who lets themselves be sacrificed for others in the party or tribe. But why would it apply to her? More importantly, why would she not want Luke to know they were related? He was all she had left.


	4. Chapter Three: Of Droids And Dreams

Sacrifice

Chapter Three:

Of Droids and Dreams

Dreams can sometimes tell more about a person than actions.

Lormé spent over an hour meditating. The time flew while she was seeing the future, adding to the long list of questions she needed answers to. It frustrated her that lately every answer or clue she got only caused her to ask four more questions. Why couldn't she just get a straight answer?

"Falling asleep while meditating isn't a good habit to acquire my young Padawan." The slip was unintentional and there was no possible way she would have caught it. Ben found himself having to be reminded more and more that Lormé wasn't Anakin and she wasn't damned to follow in his footsteps.

It was just too easy for him to forget; to pretend it never happened. Twelve years later he still had nightmares of sulfured air and sand of glass.

"I was asleep? I didn't realize," She muttered. If she was asleep, did that make her vision really just a dream? And odd manifestation of some subconscious fear?

After a moment's silence, Ben got up from the edge of his bed and walked over to the storage chest in the middle of the living area. It was beaten and old, but well-loved. Within, it contained remnants of his history. Artifacts of the Jedi Order, his journals spanning well before the Clone Wars, and all of the holo news clippings and Republic-era datacards Lormé had brought with her.

Buried as deep as it's former master should be, was a metallic cylinder approximately thirty centimeters long. Ben had long ago hidden Anakin's lightsaber even from his old wizened eyes. It has been long said that a Jedi's lightsaber was his life. Not only was it often his only physical weapon, it was a representation of his personality. No two weapons were alike, just like the warriors who wielded them.

"Your father would want you to have this," he said as he handed the handle of the weapon to the child. Lormé held her father's lightsaber in her hands with the sort of reverence usually reserved for holy relicts.

"I'm sure he would, but it's not meant for me. A Jedi makes their own." Lormé knew her actions surprised Ben but she knew that it would not be right for her to accept her father's saber. There had to be some sort of heirloom left for Luke. Lormé had her mother's most prized possession, a japor snippet carved by her future husband when they were just children, hanging around her neck.

"True, but why don't you use it for now. Just until you are able to construct your own."

Despite the slight sacrilegious feeling the act gave her she consented. To become a proper Jedi Lormé had to use the weapons and it wasn't as if Ben had a vast collection of spare sabers lying about. The way he held the tool told Lormé that if he had the option, he old man may not have given it up.

To Lormé, it seemed as if Ben thought of the saber as her father's tombstone. The idea made sense to the girl. The manner in which Order Sixty-Six had been carried out, as far as Lormé could tell, was barbarically brutal. Few Jedi were properly laid to rest and even fewer had any sort of memorial.

The training began with the basics: elementary lightsaber safety and stances. Lormé was a quick study and was soon ready to move on to training droids.

For hours, she stood blocking blaster shoots until time for a break. Her brow was glistening with sweat and her shoulders were heaving. It was clear Lormé had had quite the workout, but unlike most children her age, she did not complain. How could she when all this was to put her on her path to becoming a Jedi?

"Ben?" She asked curiously. Had he been her mother, she knew the conversation would probably have gone very differently if only for the fact the Lormé would have been able to guess the answer beforehand.

"Yes, young one?" Ben Kenobi was not the first to call her that, but he was the first who was not swiftly put into his place by Lormé's swift tongue for it. Unlike all those legions of men who were trying to catch her mother's never wandering eyes, Ben never meant it in a condescending way. Actually, he used it as a term of endearment.

"Can I go into town today? I have a few credits left from when I first arrived here and I would like to find an old droid or something to fix up. I just need something to do around here besides training." Ben sighed. He had a bad feeling about this. He had little doubt that if he let the child go, before too long the little hut would be overrun by droids of every size and shape.

"Yes, you can go," he answered after deciding that maybe that wouldn't be so bad; that maybe it wasn't such a sin to pretend for a little while.

Luke was almost excited to be allowed to go into Anchorhead with his Aunt Beru. It wasn't so much that he liked the place, it was more the fact that it wasn't the farm. One can only stare at the same stretch of barren sand for so long before they desperately need a change of scenery. Besides that, Luke knew the ride would give him some time to think and maybe even ask a question or two.

"Aunt Beru?" He had waited until they were alone to ask the question for a reason. Luke felt he needed answers, if there was any way he could get them. Uncle Owen would get mad. He didn't understand why Luke missed so much what he never had but Aunt Beru was different.

Lormé's question in class that day had raised a lot of questions in Luke's mind, not all of which could be asked or even articulated, but some could. Beru was the only person who may have the answers he so desperately wanted and who would be willing to share.

"What do you know about my mother?"

Beru sighed at the question and Luke couldn't help but wonder if maybe the question had hurt her. She had been the closest thing to a mother he could ever remember. Did his questions just remind her that she wasn't his birth mother, that she could never have a child of her own?

"I don't know anything for sure," she said, intending to leave it at that, but Luke's dejected face forced her to continue. "But, about three years before you were born your father did bring a nice young woman to the farm with him. They never actually said they were in a relationship, but with the way they looked at each other, they didn't have to say it. You remind me of her a lot."

"Do you remember her name or where was she was from?" His voice was too earnest for Beru to deny him at least some information.

"Padmé, I think it was and if I remember correctly, she was from Naboo. What started all these questions?" She knew that there was only so much information she could give him. It would not do to tell him her suspicion that his mother had been someone of importance. Knowing Luke, he would want to go off on some sort of adventure to find her.

"We got a new girl in class today and she got into a fight with Klyn Tainer when he called her mother a whore." Unlike kids of his age on some other planets, he knew exactly what it meant. There was little use trying to shelter a child in a place like Tatooine.

"Oh my, I hope she is okay." Beru, like most of Anchorhead knew of the boy's reputation. He was a brute and a bully. Picking on a little girl was not out of the sphere of reality for him.

"Actually Aunt Beru, I'd be more worried about Klyn."

"Luke, honey, it would be best if you didn't mention this conversation to your uncle." Beru didn't really have to tell Luke that. It was an unspoken rule in the Lars' house that anything to do with Anakin Skywalker was not mentioned.

"Why does he hate my dad?"

"Owen never hated Anakin. They just didn't agree. Owen thought Anakin should have stayed home instead of gallivanting around the galaxy. Things got really bad when Shmi died. I think they both blamed each other for her death. Anakin blamed Owen for not being enough to protect her and Owen blamed Anakin for not being there when she needed him most." Beru tried to explain it the best she could but, again, this wasn't something that was talked about much.

The conversation stopped as the speeder slowed. They had reached Anchorhead. Luke wasn't looking forward to wandering around with his aunt while she looked for the best bargain on blue milk and bantha bites.

Suddenly, a streak of blond caught his attention. Luke saw what could only be Lor going into a junk shop. With his aunt's permission, he followed, carefully making his way through the junk that lined the walls in an attempt to sneak up on her.

"Hi Luke," She said without turning around. In the brief time he had known her, Luke could tell there was something a little odd about the girl. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but rather something that would make her fitting in to the defined social structure in Anchorhead more than a little difficult.

"Hi Lor." That caught her attention even thought it was not his intention.

"What did you call me?" Lormé had had a lot of nick names in the past, but rarely were they so kind. Normally it was simply 'freak.'

"I called you Lor. It doesn't bother you, does it?" Suddenly Luke was self-conscious. It would not do to have offended his new friend already.

"No. I like it, but that means I'll have to think of something better for you. How 'bout logy?" It was lame, she knew, but it served its purpose.

"That's even worse than Wormie," he groaned.

Lormé laughed at his antics as she browsed the piles of junk for something salvageable. Most of it was broken to the point that any other sensible person would only think of it as scrap. But Lormé wasn't exactly what people thought of as sensible, at least when it came to machines.

"What are you looking for?" Luke asked as his sister browsed thought the junk.

"All the stuff over here are things most people buy really cheap to strip for scrap metal and wires. Just between you and me, I'm very good at fixing things. If I could find something really cheap to fix, then I could sell it back when I'm done for a lot more money," Lormé explained in a whisper.

"What are you going to do with the money?" he asked, instantly flooring Lormé.

"I…I hadn't really thought about it." It was unusual for Lormé to have not thought something over completely, but it really didn't matter. Her fixing things wasn't primarily for money.

"What would you do with it?" Lormé asked in an attempt to get to know her brother a little better.  
It frustrated and infuriated her that she knew so little about someone she should know almost everything about. Lormé should be able to second-guess his every move and thought. Wasn't that a privilege of being a sibling?

"I guess I'd save up and buy a ship. Anything to get off this rock. Don't get me wrong, I love Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen. But I can't stay here my entire life."

"Why don't we do that? We can save up and buy a ship. Then we can go anywhere we want to. You can pilot it and I'll keep it running. We can see it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. What do you think?" From the time she could reach the controls even Lormé's mother had barely been allowed to fly the ship, so for her to offer to let Luke do just that, was a very unwonted action.

"Where would we go first?" Luke was playing along with her game, for that's all it could be: a simple game of make-believe. It may never be reality, but it was a welcomed escape from it.

"I've always wanted to go to Naboo. It's not far from here actually, but you can tell it's a different world. I was there once when I was very small, so I can't remember much. It was green though, very, very green. And beautiful."

"My aunt told me that my mother was from Naboo. Her name was Padmé."

Lormé was stunned for a moment. This was their chance. How easy it would be to tell him. All she would have to do was causally mention the coincidences. From there it would be easy to mention other similarities between him and herself. It wouldn't take long for him to go from point A to point B.

Lormé could imagine his reaction. For a while, Luke would not believe her. He had been told lies his entire life, so when she enlightened him it would be difficult for him to accept. But once he accepted what she said they could be a family, the family her mother had wanted them to be. Then Lormé would no longer be alone.

As much as she wanted to tell Luke everything, something stopped her. The words from her vision disturbed her greatly. Why would she not want him to know? What could have happened between now and then to change everything?

"Padmé is a rather common name on Naboo. A lot of parents name their daughters after a famous queen and senator. If all you have is a first name, it's probably best you don't dig too deep." It was hurting her to be adding to the lies that constructed the very fabric of his reality, but the Force told her it was what had to be done. She tried to comfort herself by convincing herself that it wasn't exactly a lie, Padmé was a common name…now. But that didn't make it any less evil.

"Really," he muttered. "She seems like quite a woman. I'd like to know more about her." He knew it was crazy but something deep in the pit of his stomach told him that maybe, just maybe…but it was impossible. If his mother had been a senator from a beautiful planet, then why was he condemned to waste away here?

"I have a book about her. If you'd like I can lend it to you." Just because he wasn't able to know her as his mother didn't mean he couldn't know her at all. It was a pity the book would only teach him the public side of her and, because it was a pre-Empire edition, it would not cover all the good things she did for the galaxy towards the end of the Clone Wars.

"I'd like that. Hey did you mean it when you said your father was a Jedi?" He asked a little too loud. No one noticed… but still. If word that the child of a Jedi was living on Tatooine got to the emperor, Lormé wouldn't be the only one in danger. Ben and Luke would most likely be damned as well.

"Announce it to the whole world, why don't 'cha!" She hissed. "It's okay Luke. You just have to be quiet about it," Lormé continued once she calmed down. It was not Luke's fault he didn't know just how much trust she had placed in him in telling her secret.

"I wish-" he began and then paused for a moment almost as if he had trouble articulating what he wanted to say." I wish I had known my parents. You seem to know so much about yours even though they're dead. All I know s-" Despite it being the very definition of rude, Lormé felt she had to interrupt him. She could not stand to see Luke as anything other then his bright, happy self.

"But Luke you do know them." He looked at her oddly for a moment before she continued, "All children are just a collection of the best and worse traits of their parents. All you have to do is look in the mirror to catch a glimpse of them." Luke could tell she was just trying to make him feel better but he appreciated it nonetheless.

"Luke?" His aunt asked as she came t into the store to collect her nephew. Luke wanted desperately to be allowed to stay but knew it would not be permitted.

"Bye Lor. I'll see you around."


	5. Chapter Four: Busy Hands And Idle Ideas

Sacrifice

Chapter Four:

Busy Hands and Idle Ideas

"Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold."

Andre Maurois

Luke knew his uncle was so going to kill him. The boy had been told again and again not to race but Luke did it anyways. It wasn't out of a lack of respect for his uncle's wishes, as much as it was out of an innate desire to relieve the chronic boredom that plagued his life.

Speeder-bike racing was just about the only thing to do on this barren rock of a planet. The fact that he was the best pilot of the group, even better than Lor, didn't help him follow the rules. For him, the feeling of being behind the controls was the best feeling in the world.

"Wow, Luke you are so dead." Biggs said as he inspected the smoke rising from the wreck. The only blessing in the situation was that the speeder hadn't been totally demolished when he had been pushed against the canyon's rocky walls. Instead of completely destroying the bike and quite possibly Luke in the collision, the boy had managed to minimized the damage. But it was not so minimal that Luke could fix it without his uncle knowing. He was good but not that good. Not like Lor was.

"Biggs, can I use your comm real quick?" he asked in a moment of inspiration so profound, it would have made even the best artist green with envy. In the two years of their friendship, Lor had never failed to be there for him when he needed it. Anytime he had needed to talk she had been there to listen, even in the middle of the night.

It was clear by the perplexed look on his face that Biggs didn't exactly see what could possibly be fixed by a comm call but he handed it over anyways. Luke could understand that. To everyone else at school, Lor was just the quiet little freak that had somehow managed to beat Klyn Tanier to a pulp. Luke was the only one Lor talked to without the situation requiring it, so no one knew just how much of a genius she was at a lot of things.

"Luke?" Lor asked when she answered the call. It didn't take her long to realize something was wrong. Not only could she see the anxiousness on his face but she could feel his fears throught the Force.

"I, err, kind of need your help." he said in a slightly embarrassed tone.

"What do you need?" Her voice was sure and defined in a way Biggs had never heard before. The boy could tell that if Luke asked Lor to help dispose of a body, she wouldn't even blink an eye as she agreed.

"Well I sort of wrecked my speeder. It's not totally trashed just busted up a little and-"

"And let me guess. You need me to fix it up before your uncle finds out right?" she said with a smile. Luke was always getting into trouble but this was the first time he had asked her for help.

"No problem. I'll be there in five." If it had been anyone else, Luke would have been worried. Lor had not asked where Luke was before she cut the transmission. Luke knew however, that for the past two years, Lor had been studying to become a Jedi. It would not have been hard for her to find him using her powers.

It was an odd thought that she could find him anywhere at any time, but Luke didn't mind. He trusted her impeccably for some reason. Luke got a feeling deep in his gut that told him that he had met her before.

Suddenly, a bright white stripe shot across the horizon. Lor's swoop bike was going much faster than any normal bike could go, much faster than any normal pilot could control.

"Luke, do you think she'll let me borrow it for the next race?" Biggs asked, causing Luke to wonder if he had some kind of crush on Lor. The thought filled him with a strange sort of protectiveness for the girl. Biggs wasn't a bad guy… Lor deserved better.

"No. She's too smart for that."

"Hey, I'm not the one who crashed into the canyon wall!"

"Where's the patient?" Lor asked, dismounting her supped-up swoop-bike. Lor was in business mode and ready to get to work. When Luke had called, she had just been getting ready to put together her first lightsaber. Lor had been so excited at the prospect of no longer having to use her father's- Luke's- lightsaber that, had it been anyone else, she would have ignored the call.

When she saw what was left of Luke's bike, she let out a low whistle. Lor was flattered that Luke had so much faith in her abilities.

"Can you fix it?" Luke asked earnestly. A lot was riding on her answer. If she couldn't, then Luke might as well walk right into a Tusken Raider camp because his death would definitely be much quicker and more merciful.

"Not sure. I'll have to take it back to my workshop for a few hours at least."

"Hours? My uncle can't know." Luke groaned. It was a desperate situation. The last thing Lor ever wanted to do was let Luke down. She pressed her lips together as she thought.

"What's your uncle doing right now?" Luke had no idea where she was going with this but decided to play along with it.

"Probably working on the vaporators out on the south range .Why?"

"Because I'm about to save your ass. Now hand me the comm." Biggs watched as this girl changed before his eyes. Instead of the quiet, stoic, girl everyone knew at school, he began to see the real Lormé Thule: smart, strong, and beautiful. Not a common combination around these parts.

"If you need any help-" Biggs began, trying to make a pass at the girl. The older boy didn't quite realize that Lor was only fourteen years old compared to his eighteen, for she looked more mature than was usual for a girl of her age.

Lor rolled her eyes at Biggs. He was not the first boy to try to hit on her, just the oldest so far. She had nothing against the boy except the fact that he hadn't noticed her until she had grown breasts. As her mother had raised her to be, Lor was not one to suffer superficial fools.

"I won't. You would just get in the way," she shot back in an attempt to discourage the black-haired brown-eyed boy. Even if she was interested, she had too much going on in her life and too many secrets to keep to date.

"Hey! I'm one of the best mechanics around here," Biggs shouted in indignation.

"Really? You're a mechanic? Then I'm a Jedi. You should never claim to be the best; you should simply be the best. Anyone can string a few words together. That doesn't make them true. So why don't you go play somewhere else and leave the real work to those who actually know what they're doing." Lor was more then half hopping that Biggs would continue the verbal sparing session. It had been far too long since she had had the opportunity to hone her skills.

"Oh and you think you're the best just because your bike goes a little faster than normal?" he sneered.

"Guys!" Luke said in a feeble attempt to mediate before things got really heated. Both Lor and Biggs had fiery tempers and neither would back down if it came to a fight.

"I never claimed to be," Lor said but her arrogant tone clearly betrayed her thoughts. She shouldn't have to.

"Whatever, I'm out of here. Luke let me know how it all works out, alright?" Biggs muttered as he mounted his own speeder bike and left. Lor didn't have much time to mull over her loss of a sparring match before she had to get to work.

"Hello Mrs. Lars," Lor asked when her and Luke's shared aunt answered. Beru greatly liked Lor and the sentiment was returned. Lor had always found the woman to be a great person to talk to.

"Lormé, how are you?" Beru asked as pleasant as ever.

"Oh I'm fine. Umm…I was wondering, do you think it may be possible for Luke to have dinner tonight at my house? I'm trying out a new recipe and, just between you and me, my uncle isn't the most unbiased judge." Lormé's voice was dripping with honey. If Luke didn't know better, he would swear she was being genuine. Beru usually saw thorough those kinds of things, but she didn't this time. Lor was just that good of a liar.

Lor let her eyes widen a fraction of a centimeter, just enough to give that innocent, hopeful look the adults just adored. It was a ready tool to get what she wanted; one that, like a Jedi mind trick, Lor did not use lightly. She hated having to tell a flat-out lie but for Luke she would in a heartbeat.

"Is he done with his chores?" Beru personally wouldn't mind giving the boy a day off occasionally but she had to ask anyway. Owen would be impossible to live with if Luke skipped out on a day's chores.

Inwardly, Luke groaned. He still had a dozen vaporators to set. The race had just been something to do during a break. There was no way his aunt would let him stay if she knew that but Lor had already guessed as much.

"I would assume so. He's not usually allowed out to play otherwise. Am I correct?" Lor answered.

"Alright. Have fun." And with that, Beru cut the transmission. There would be hell to pay when his aunt and uncle found out that the boy had skipped out on his chores but Luke guessed it was more than an even trade. The punishment for skipping out on his chores would be a lot less than if they found out he wrecked the bike.

Without as much as a word to her brother, Lor proceeded to hook the dismembered bike up to her own. Magnetic fields had to be used to keep all of the loose parts together but that was fine as long as they didn't drive over some buried ship or something. Lor couldn't help but let out a little laugh at the thought. If that was to happen, then the swoop bikes would either be stopped very quickly or they would slingshot backwards like someone in a child's cartoon as they passed.

The trip back was only slightly slower than the trip there had been. Modifications made to the repulsor servers allowed for almost perfect compensation for the extra weight.

Lor parked directly in the garage and after a brief word with Ben, the two children got to work.

"Luke, if you want this fixed in time, you're going to have to help me," Lor said from where she laid under the speeder.

"Oh, sorry." Luke had been distracted by the array of parts laid out on a work bench by the door. They were all carefully laid out around a silver cylinder. It was clear that it was all part of the same project. Luke started to pick up to crystals when Lor's voice rang out.

"Don't touch them. If they touch under the wrong circumstances, they could explode. You can touch anything else you want to, just leave the crystals alone please." Lor knew he was curious. It was so easy to feel in the Force that the girl could practically smell the emotion rolling off of him.

Deep down, Luke at least had a suspicion as to what it was. Anything that had to do with the Jedi fascinated him. He had asked his aunt and uncle about them once and had been unable to get anything other than his aunt's assertion that the legends of the Jedi were greatly exaggerated. It confused him to have both his Aunt Beru and Lor, two people he knew would never lie to him, telling him two different things.

"What is it?" Luke asked, just as Lor had anticipated.

"My very own lightsaber. I've been working on it for weeks and had just been about to put it together when you called," she explained as her brother examined the hilt. Lor's dual interest in art and mechanics had been amply reflected in the design and construction of the hilt. The silver metal used had been polished until it was shinier then anything on this sand-blasted rock had any right to be. Black rubber strips, as thin as wire, had been used to create delicate web-like swirl patterns. These ornamentations were not just idle decoration; they also served as the grip of the device.

Unlike most Padawans, Lor had not used her master's saber for inspiration, nor had she incorporated much of her father's design into her own masterpiece. In truth the only graphic similarities her saber would have to Anakin Skywalker's was the slanted emitter shroud and the blue blade color. Lor's original design had called for a pure white blade but she was nowhere skilled enough to kill a Krayt dragon and retrieve the required pearl for that particular color, so instead she was limited to using the spare crystals Ben had for now.

"Luke, buddy, I get your curiosity, but I really kind of need your help with this. I mean, I'm good but not that good. Could you work on the shifter while I try to salvage the power couplings? Even with both of us working, we may not be able to get this thing saved."

"Biggs could have helped…he would have had you not gotten him mad," Luke muttered, unintentionally getting her almost as mad as she had gotten Biggs. Lor was just better at hiding her feelings.

"He couldn't have come here. You were just holding the proof of why in your hands. I trust you Luke with my secrets, but not him. No matter how much you trust him. Too much is at stake." Lor may not have suffered fools, but Luke was allowed an occasional foolish moment.

Luke quietly thought about what she said and decided to let it go. The atmosphere in the room had gotten tense enough and he didn't want to tick Lor off, not when so much was riding on her helping him.

"Lor?" he asked after a few moments of defining silence.

"Hmm?" She acknowledged, concentrating heavily on reattaching the power couplings to the undercarriage of the bike.

"Tell me a story." Lor sighed. She had long ago began telling Luke the very stories she had been told by her mother and Ben. Just because Luke could not know the truth about his parents didn't mean he couldn't know the truth about hers. It was a small consolation, but it was all Lor could give him while still keeping him safe.

"Alright. Here's one you haven't heard: Jedi weren't allowed to get married or have children; the Jedi Council thought that if they had those things, then the fear of losing them could turn them to the Dark Side of the Force. According to Ben, however, my dad was never the kind of person to blindly follow outdated rules, so when he meet my mother just before the beginning of the Clone Wars it didn't take them long to tie the knot." Besides the movement of tools and the gentle clanging of parts, nothing could be heard but the clear tenor of Lor's voice, even as muffled as it was by the speeder above her.

Luke already knew everything Lor had said. So many of her stories begin the same way: with her father. They truly were kindred spirits, Lor and Luke. They both obviously hero-worshiped their fathers and neither had truly ever had the chance to know the men.

"My mother worked at the Senate building and one day my father came to visit her. The Jedi Council had given him some vacation time and he wanted my mother to go away with him. She couldn't; she had a lot of important work she had to do, but he kept trying to convince her

"He took his lightsaber and put it into her hands saying 'When I constructed my first lightsaber, my master told me that it was my life. The way I feel about you is stronger than that.' Just then, someone knocked on the door, forcing my mom to hide his lightsaber in her sleeve.

"Someone my mother worked with had come to walk her to a meeting. There was no way she could refuse without drawing suspicion and that was something they didn't need. Their jobs were too important to the galaxy for them to risk losing them.

"Almost as soon as the meeting started, the Senators found out that the entire east wing of the Senate building had been hijacked by a vile band of bounty hunters who were trying to break a gangster out of prison. By holding a group of important Senators hostage, they thought the Chancellor would have no choice but to give in to their demands. But they hadn't counted on having a Jedi in the building.

"Dad fought as long as he could without his lightsaber, but eventually they knocked him out. Instead of killing him and having the wrath of the entire Jedi Order coming down on their heads, they chose to just throw him in the room with the hostages. After setting explosive charges in the room so the hostages couldn't escape, the bounty hunters left. Within a few seconds of their captors leaving, my dad woke up and got his saber from my mom. Without any hesitation he used it to cut right through the floor creating a doorway for them to escape through. Luckily, everyone got out before the charges exploded."

Luke always thought Lor was making up the stories. There was just so much that couldn't possibly happen. Like bounty hunters getting into the Senate building. But they were nice stories all the same.

"Lor, do you ever wonder if your dad is still alive? I mean if he really was such a powerful Jedi then couldn't he have survived the Purges?" It would be nice if that were true. Luke knew the possibilities of his own father being alive out there somewhere where less than zero, but Lor's…he was a Jedi Knight.

Luke was so caught up in living vicariously that it took him a couple of seconds to notice the lack of lightly clanging metal. Lor had stopped working; stopped moving even stopped breathing.

"That's a cruel thing to ask," she whispered.

The cruelest part was that he was right. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew he couldn't be dead. All her life she had felt her father was somewhere out there but she had always writhen it off to daydreams. But to have Luke say it gave the idea a level of credence she had never before allowed it. Now that she accepted the hope that it was possible, what was she going to do with it?


	6. Chapter Five: Of Bad Feelings And Worse

Sacrifices

Chapter Five (UNBETAED)

Of Bad Feelings and Worse Plans

"A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ."

John Steinbeck

Luke's words echoed within the confines of Lormé's mind with a vengeance. It had not been the first time the idea had visited her imagination but every other time it had only been a vague musing. She had always thought it was nothing, but to hear the idea come form someone else, from Luke, gave it so much more weight.

What if? If her father was still alive then why wasn't Luke and Lor living with him. Why were she and Luke separated? Why did her mother have to always be so lonely, so miserable? If he was alive then did Ben know? No, he couldn't have, otherwise he would have found him. He would have helped him. They were brothers after all.

"Lor?" Luke asked pulling his sister out of her musings. He was worried about her. Ever since he had asked that question she had been distracted and almost unwontedly quite.

"What?" Lor asked before realizing that she had been making the sandwiches on auto pilot. It was not difficult to sense Luke's worry. The emotion was so evident despite Luke's attempt to hide it, that Lor smiled. Sometimes it's nice to be cared for.

"Wait. I did tell your aunt that I was trying a new recipe didn't I? Well lying is not the Jedi way…" Before handing the sandwich off, she rummaged through the cabinets for a few moments before pulling a bag of Hitti pepper chips. Lor then proceeded to dump half the bag on each sandwich.

"What? I've never had it before have you?" Lor teased at Luke's face. He just shook his head and smiled but he wasn't quite ready to let all of his worry go. He couldn't help the bad feeling that crept into his bones and the sinking feeling that it was all his fault.

They worked as they ate in a desperate attempt to finish the speeder bike in time. Lor wasn't sure if they could finish it before dark but it didn't really matter. All they had to do was wait until just past dark then call Luke's Aunt and Uncle and say they had lost trick of time. With all the Tusken Rrader attacks lately there was a good chance they'd let him stay the night rather then risk it. Deep down Lor was hopping that was the case for it would give her the chance to pretend all was all it should be.

She knew it was a petty wish but she didn't care. The force owed her that at least. Lor had followed the message it had given her two years ago to keep her mouth shut. She had told her brother nothing about their relation nor had she cornered Ben demanding the answers she was entitled to. The least fate could do was allow her a few hours of pretence.

"Done" she muttered half an hour latter as she lowered her tools.

The speeder bike had gone from almost being scrap metal to being almost as good as new in a matter of hours. Owen would never know that Luke had been racing. If he did ever find out, not only would Like be punished for racing but he would be punished for asking for help as well.

The issue wasn't so much the old man's dislike for the girl as it was the fact that Luke asked for their help. Owen Lars was a very proud man who made it his personal mission to never accept help and he forced the rule on his nephew.

Lor had always gotten the distinct impression that he was afraid of something. It had something to do with Ben, Luke, and their father, but she couldn't tell if it was one giant fear or several smaller ones.

"Alright let's get this thing home before I get into even more trouble." Luke said in relief. He was completely oblivious to Lor's disappointment, it was too well hidden.

Lor nodded and mounted her bike as her brother did the same. Like could get back to his house alone but she wouldn't let him. It was too much of a risk. If the speeder bike wasn't fixed properly and he broke down then Luke's chances wouldn't be good.

Spontaneous breakdown seemed to be less and less of an issue the further they traveled. The bike actually managed to go faster then it used to, a fact that very quickly prompted the siblings to begin racing each other. It was a rather stupid move considering how they had gotten into this mess but Lor knew nothing would happen.

The twins' jubilant mood immediately died as they approached the Lars' homestead. Owen was standing at the head of the long flight of stairs that lead into the underground portion of the home. His arms were crossed an his face was stern. It was clear to see that he was not pleased.

"Luke, inside now! You know better. Those chores weren't done and you know it!" he roared causing the boy to shrink back. Obviously Owen was madder then Luke had though he would be. Maybe he noticed something about the bike. Could he have?

"But-" Luke began, trying to explain but his uncle wouldn't give him the chance. It wouldn't be the first time he wouldn't have a chance to tell his side of the story. Being used to the treatment didn't make it any more fair.

"No buts just get in there!" All Owen's shouting had drawn his wife from the kitchen of the house. She had been putting away the leftovers from dinner away when her husband had noticed Luke arriving.

"Oh goodness," Lor muttered putting her hand over her mouth as if she had just realized something horrible. "Mr. Lars-"

"You stay out of it! This is none of you or that crazy old bustard's concern." He snapped at her with more malice and hate then he had shown for Luke.

"Owen!" Beru chastised. He did not usually act like this but when he did it angered her to no end. After almost fifteen years of marriage he could still surprise her and not always in good ways. Shmi had taught him better. She, and Cliegg for that matter, would have been appalled at his behavior. It was one thing for him to not like Kenobi but to take it out and make it so clear to the old man's niece was another thing entirely, especially when Owen and Beru owed so much to the man. Without him they wouldn't have had Luke to raise.

"I don't know what you have against my uncle, and frankly I don't care. It's none of my business. What is my business is why are you so intent on judging me by his actions. I have not done the same to your family. I have not let my less then favorable opinion of you influence what I think of Luke or Miss Beru, so why can you not extend the same courtesy to me?" The girl snapped with such venom that Owen was momentarily rendered speechless. None of Luke's friends had ever spoken to him like that.

"Miss Beru, what I was going to tell your husband was that the situation was mostly my fault. Luke was saying good-bye to Biggs when I called you so he wasn't there to correct my assumption. When I told him that you had said yes he must have assumed that Mr. Lars had already informed you that he wasn't done and that you had that information when you gave your answer. We did not in anyway blatantly disregard your wishes; it was simply a misunderstanding. Goodnight." Lor didn't give the woman a chance to respond, not that she really could. Beru was taking the children's side on this one but her conversation with her pigheaded husband was not one to be held within earshot of others.

Lor quickly raced back to Ben's house. She was angry at Owen for being such a jerk to he brother and she was mad at herself for just leaving Luke there. He didn't belong there. Luke belonged with people who would understand him; who let him be himself and not with people who were desperate to fit him into a little box. Luke wouldn't survive the suffocation. His destiny was far too big for him to simply be a moisture farmer as Owen would have.

The slam of the door brought Ben out of his meditations. Lor knew he could tell something was wrong. Although it was not uncommon for her to be angry, it was uncommon for her to show it outwardly. Thankfully, Ben said nothing to her as she went directly to the middle of the room and started meditating. Perhaps he was glad that she was accepting that side of her and trying to fix it herself instead of giving in.

The entire situation ticked her off to no end and for a Jedi that was a dangerous place to be in. Ever since the whole Tanner incident Ben had been constantly reminding her about controlling her anger. Lor got it; her disposition was a little too angry for a Jedi but the meditation helped.

It took her a while to clear her mind but once she was submerged in the Force little could bother her. She sought out Luke's force signature and surrounded herself with it. It was an exercise Lor often undertook for it was one of the only surefire ways to calm her down. She wrapped herself in everything that made him Luke; earnest, kind, childish, and innocent. Things Lor had long ago lost or maybe she had never had them. Her mother had occasionally commented on how she wasn't like other children. How she was an old soul.

Living with her mother had been like a color blind person trying to appreciate a painting known for its vibrancy. Padmé had, in a lot of ways died with Anakin. That loss of light was obvious to Lor from a young age and seemed to dim the child's light in turn. Her mother's sadness had instilled her with a such a since of empathy that Lor matured rather quickly in some respects.

Luke on the other hand was as innocent and as childlike as they come.

As Lor reached out to him through the force she noticed a connection she had previously overlooked. The swirling and pulling of the force was very similar to that of her brother's but it wasn't. it was older; darker and it called to her blood. Whoever was on the other end needed her.

The force lead her to a field that contained only slightly more life then the barren landscape of Tatooine. What had to be every star in the galaxy could be seen in the sky, shinning down. Dressed in Jedi robes of deep brown and black a man stood with his back to Lor. He had broad shoulders and a tense posture, like a tortured prisoner who was unknowingly given a short reprieve. Even without being able to see his face, Lor recognized him.

"Dad?" she whispered. Because she was still so far away he may not have heard her call so she repeated her question after taking a handful of steps towards him. This time it was easy to see him tense even further, almost she were a torture he had been expecting.

"What do you want?" he snapped, far more cruelly then she ever could have imagined. He turned slowly to face Lor, taking his time almost like he knew all he would see was the monster from under the bed.

"For us to be a family. All three of us. Isn't that what you want?" He flinched at the word 'three.' What was it about Luke that brought him pain? Was he even thinking of the boy?

"My family died long ago. Now leave!" This was not the man she had seen in the news clippings and the few holo-vids her mother kept. Life had beaten him and caused him to build a wall which no emotion could get through. He had had to learn how to shield his emotions form everyone else and everyone else's form him.

"Do you not know who I am?" She had thought he would be able to tell the connection just by looking at her. This was not how it should have went. They should have embraced and that simple act would make everything better; fill all the holes. At least, that how it works in all the made-for-holo-movies.

"A ghost sent to haunt me." Despite his desperate attempts to hide his emotions, his eyes were too expressive not to betray what his face would not. The deep blue orbs were windows into a world of pain and sadness that threatened to swallow her whole.

"How could I be a ghost? Until a few hours ago I didn't believe it was possible for you to be alive." Lor explained in an attempt to shave away his hostilities. Maybe if he understood why she hadn't been looking then he would forgive her.

"Is that what this is called?" Anakin gave a bitter laugh.

"I see. More proof of what I already know. The galaxy is not what it should be. Heroes disserve to be happy." The whispered words of the child only served to spark his anger.

"You do not know that of which you speak child. I have gotten exactly as I disserve." the broken man hissed at his daughter.

"So you're as broken as she was. She didn't need to be so sad. Not if you really have been alive all this time. Don't worry I'll fix it. I'll find some way to fix it all and when I find you we can all be a family again." Anakin's words had not lessened the girl's desire to bring her family together. On the contrary. She was now more determined than ever.

"You should not look child. You will not find that which you seek." Lor just shook her head in sadness. Things should not be this way. Good men should not have been so metaphorically beaten by life especially when they had saved so many lives and did so much good.

"Perhaps. Or maybe you'll be the one to find more then you could ever know to look for." Lor alluded with a smile. Luke would be a pleasant surprise for latter. It seemed to be just the thing he needed.

Less than a week later Lor found herself knocking on the Lars' front door. It would have been best if she simply left without saying a word but she couldn't do that. Luke disserved better.

Lor knew that if Ben got wind of her plains he would do anything to stop her. He would think it was too dangerous; that the chances were too remote but she had to try. She had to fix things for her father and for Luke. She was the only one who could. Luke didn't know that anything was broken and her father didn't believe that anything could be fixed.

"Hey Miss Beru. May I talk to Luke really quick?" Lor asked when the woman came to the door.

"I'm sorry, he's still grounded." Beru really did seem sorry. It was clear to see that if it were up to her, of if her husband even listened to her, Luke would not have been punished in the first place.

"Oh. I'll be really quick. I'm going away for a while and need to say goodbye. He'd never forgive me if I didn't." Lor appealed to Beru's compassion.

"Alright." she finally agreed to go fetch the boy. Lor waited quietly while Beru informed Luke of his visitor. She was glad that she had not been invited inside. It would be easer for her and Luke to talk if they were sure they wouldn't be overheard.

"Hey Lor. I should have know it was you. No one else could convince my aunt to bend the rules."

"Yep that's what I do best. Forcing little old ladies to do my evil bidding. Maw ha ha ha." she cackled, not noticing that her brother didn't find it funny.

"Forcing?" he asked with a stern look.

"Not literally. Dummy." she humphed, insulted.

"Just making sure."

"Mind tricks only work on the weak minded and that will never describe your aunt. Your uncle… maybe." she teased but Luke didn't think it funny.

"Lor." the castigation was sharp and out of character for the boy.

"Sorry, I'm still a little mad at him. Does he treat all your friends like that?" she apologized. The last thing she ever wanted was to have Luke mad at her.

"No. just you."

"So I was right. He is projecting his hatred for Ben onto me. At least it wasn't something I did." she muttered causing Luke to laugh.

"Look Luke, I came to say goodbye." Lor said, suddenly dead serious.

"Goodbye? Where are you going." Luke asked. The devastation in his voice hurt Lor but she knew it would soon be replaced with joy when she brought their father back to him.

"To visit some family." she knew that she couldn't tell him everything. This would be the first place Ben looked for information when he realized she was gone. That is if Owen would let him.

"On Naboo?" Lor couldn't tell if the emotion in his voice was from Luke fishing for information or if it was because the place struck a cord.

"I might wind up going out that way, but probably not." she said deterring any possibility of Luke asking her to look for information.

"Man! Everyone's getting off this rock but me." he complained.

"What do you mean?" Lor asked interested.

"Biggs is leaving for the Academy in a few months and now you're leaving."

"I'm only going to be gone for a little while and when I come back I'll bring you a surprise." she promised in an attempt to make the boy feel better.

"I'd rather you not go. I have a bad feeling about it." Lor was the only person who would listen when Luke mentioned his bad feelings. In fact, she encouraged then so it only hurt more when she blew him off. Luke was almost desperate to keep her here and not just because he didn't want her to leave.

"Don't worry Luke I'll be fine. I'm a Jedi remember? And when I return everything will be better. I'll fix everything." She sounded so sure, so confident but Luke knew that if she left on this crazy adventure Lormé could never come back to him.

"What's broken?"

_I really didn't want to put too many Author's Notes in here but I feel I must warn people about something. By now you can probably guess at least part of what happens next, but some of those hypnotizes may be wrong. This is not in any way going to be any more of a Vader redemption fic then the original trilogy was. If that was the way the story was meant to go then I would never have created Lor. She simply doesn't have the capacity to do what Luke is destined to._

_You must keep in mind that this story is more real to me then the cannon. If I had my way then Anakin would never have turned, because he is my favorite character but I don't. I'm just the puppet who spends all their free time, and some that would be better spent on homework, typing. This may not make since to some readers but I'm sure some who are writers as well will understand. _


	7. Chapter Six: Angels And Demons

Sacrifices

Chapter Six (UNBETAED)

Angels and Demons

"Fate is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity."

Roman author Publilius Syrus

Lor had always been a firm believer in the fact that situations were only as hard as one made them, but this task was quickly forcing her to rethink that particular conviction. Trying to break into the Jedi temple unnoticed was no mean feat. Storm troopers guarded every entrance and she wouldn't be surprised in the least if they had been commanded to shoot to kill, no questions asked. Her mother had always said that those _things _were bad news.

As usual the girl had a plan. Stories and dreams had song ago wove a tale of bounty hunters who accomplished the very act she was attempting. It was not hard to adapt their stratagem to suit her own needs. Some would look down on her for using the tactics of such a malevolent troupe, but in Lor's mind, if her goal was achieved then did it really didn't matter how it was done.

Because driving a speeder right up to the side of the temple would have been far too conspicuous, she was forced to revert to another plain, one far less noticeable. A speeder in a restricted section would be noticed, but a window washer droid wouldn't be. No one really cared where those things went as long as they did their job, and they were all but impossible to spot form the ground. It wasn't difficult to reprogram one of them to carry her up to the dusty old ventilation shaft that was the only unguarded entrance.

Lor quickly found herself thanking any and every deity that ever existed for the fact that she was not afraid of heights. If so she would have been paralyzed by the thought of so many stories of nothingness below her. A sweaty palm or twist of her foot would send her tumbling down. Briefly she wondered how long it would take her to reach the bottom. A minute? Two? Or would she not even make it down? A body falling that fast meeting a speeder would not be pretty.

Lor quickly clamped down on those thoughts. Self doubt would not be anything but a hindrance right now. Be that as it was, Lor was still unnerved enough to began to chew on the frayed piece of leather that held her mother's pendant around her neck. This was an exercise she had often repeated. She would have to replace the string soon.

Although she was not the kind of child to often let her thoughts show, the tiny piece of carved wood bore the onus of her anxieties. Over the past two years the pendant had become the girl's worry stone; it's edges smoothed and polished but the design that was so carefully inlayed long before her birth was still as prominent as ever. Whenever Lor felt upset about something it provided some semblance of the comfort her parents were unable to give.

No amount of comfort in any form could help her now. She was too close to death, to storm troopers, to her goal. Lor knew she could do this, she had to. If she didn't Luke would be stuck with Owens's oppressive attitude on that barren world. He would be stuck miserable on a world he didn't want and that didn't want him.

Lor could not condemn him to that and if the quest to save him from it killed her then so be it. It was a high stakes gamble but one with far too big of a payout for her not to try. If she was right… if her father was alive he could fix everything.

The thought of her actually being part of a real family was the only inspiration for her to take the leap and risk the plunge. In what seemed to be slow motion, Lor watched the ventilation shaft get closer and closer as she actually jumped off the little droids head. Three meters. Two. After an eternity the distance was little more then a few centimeters as her fingers reached out. And found nothing but cold, empty air.

No! her mind was running through every apology she could think of. She had failed. With her dead her father and brother would never know that the other was alive. No one would be able to mend what's left of her broken, battered family. Her father, like all heroes, disserved better. Luke disserved better.

Lor's hand gripped some protrusion along the side of the temple. A rock knocked loose during the night fire rained down on it's sacred walls? Or perhaps it was a part of some design. She looked up only to see the ventilation shaft mere meters from her head. Funny. She could have sworn she had been falling for hours, but she shook the thought out of her head. There was no need to question every good thing the Force sent her way.

With a single lunge, much like she imagined Obi-Wan made to get out of the reactor core in his duel with the vile Darth Maul, Lor hurled herself once again towards the tiny opening. Her second landing was a bit more fortuitous. She landed just inside the shaft.

Lor couldn't help but manage a sneeze as the dust long settled and assaulted her nose. She could already tell that this was not going to be a particularly fun venture. Or maybe it would…

In his thirty seven year of life the man now known as Darth Vader had never had his mind assaulted with such a barrage of emotion. The vast apologetic waves were not his own. No. He had long ago learned to put aside weak feelings that would not serve the dark side. It was odd how the volley seemed to come directly at him.

Not much could break through the mental walls he had constructed. Even his master had difficulty at times deciphering the secrets Vader held. But some how this voice had shattered through them as if they were nothing. What was most disturbing was the message it sent.

_I'm so, so sorry Dad, I tried._

This was not the first time his mind had set it's self against him in an attempt to torment the man. Visions and dreams and voices haunted his wakening hours just as they did what little sleep he managed. It was not uncommon for them to include _Her, _but this was the first time they had actually mentioned the child.

Perhaps most tormenting of all, was the fact that this vision, this apparition, was more real then any about his Angel had ever been. This one felt as if it were nothing but real. This one was real. Under any other circumstances he would have credited it to his own demons coming out to play, but the vast amounts of Force energy that converged upon the ruins of the Jedi temple proved otherwise.

Long ago, in what seemed to be almost another life time to the dilapidated dark lord of the Sith, going to the Jedi temple would have been a difficult thing to do. Back when he was still fresh to this life and weak with buried guilt, Vader could not step within the once hallowed walls in fear of wakening that damned fool Skywalker.

It wasn't so much the case now. Countless massacres, hundreds of torturing, innumerable days in the hellish suit that kept him alive and over fourteen years of living with the fact that _everyone _he had ever trusted betrayed him was enough to see to that.

Vader had no trouble walking into the once majestic structure, now that his conscious was long buried and his soul was so filled with darkness that not even the light side of the force could touch it. He paid no heed to the toppled statues that littered the floors of the entrance hall or to the carbon scoring that had been left on the walls by blasters that fateful night.

With no more preamble then giving the order for the storm troopers on guard to stand down, Vader took a left and allowed the Force to lead him to what was left of the Jedi archives.

In a small nook, well hidden from all but a few of the guards, a human girl was hunched over a computer console. The Force bended and swirled around her in a way that suggested that she was somehow using it to keep the weak-minded clones form truly seeing her. The girl couldn't have been out of her teens yet she had a air of maturity that was slightly unsettling, even to the dark lord. It was as if he had seen her before.

Slowly the girl turned, alerted to his presents by the harsh mechanical breathing that had come to strike fear into the harts of many. Her fear was palatable but it did not consume her. She would not let it.

They stood there for a few seconds staring, hunter and pray. Her familiar blue eyes seemed to almost bore into his soul in a way he had not felt in a vary long time. Vader was so transfixed with his quarry that he was almost startled when she bolted towards an open ventilation shaft across the room. Ah. So that's how she snuck in. Vader vaguely remembered a group of bounty hunters accomplishing the same thing in the twilight months of the Clone Wars.

He walked over to the abandoned computer console in an attempt to see what she thought to be worth her life. A single name flashed before his eyes, a name he knew well. Anakin Skywalker. The name sent such a surge of anger surging through the dark lord that he couldn't control the impulse to completely shatter the control panel.

It was not unusual for Vader to loose his temper so quickly, but it was almost unheard of for him to not be able to give even the flimsiest of excuses

He quickly walked over to the ventilation shaft the child had escaped through. It was far too small for his bulky form to fit through. The child's tactic would not last long. He would have her dead at his feet.

Just as he was about to order the storm troopers to tare the stone walls apart in an attempt to destroy the child, something caught his eye. Laying on the ground just under where she disappeared into the ventilation system was a single thread of dark brown leather. The leather it's self did not hold the sith's attention, rather it was the small piece of carved wood attached.

The sight of the japor snippet sent Vader back to a time he really did not want to go. Memories swam within his head: memories that were was unwanted and unwelcome as their implications.

_"Are you an angel?" a young boy asked. Young. Innocent (Had he ever been innocent?). Damned. _

_"We would be living an lie. Could you live like that Anakin?" The words were harsher then he could stand but they were true. Oh so very true. _

_"I've been dieing a little bit each day since you came back into my life." How cruel it was of her to confess her love on the twilight of their death. But he didn't care. All that mattered was her. And him. Them. _

_"Something wonderful has happened…Annie, I'm pregnant." She was frightened of the implications but for that one shinning instant he saw it as any normal father-to-be would: a blessing. It didn't matter that it was against the rules or that they would no longer be able to hide their relationship. For that one instant he did not see the child for what it was: a time bomb. A curse._

_"Just help me save Padme's life. I can't live without her. I won't let her die. I want the power to stop death." It was all for her. For him. For the baby. For them. His life, his family, would not be complete without her. _

_"Come away with me. Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can." Did she not see? He was offering her the galaxy. How could she not want it? How could she have let Kenobi twist her mind against him so?_

_"I'm afraid she died. ... it seems in your anger, you killed her." No. no. no. The act was not the only one he regretted but it was the only one that he could not totally burry. It was the only one that he could not justify. With her death came the complete and utter destruction of her Anakin. _

Memories he had forced himself to forget long ago came back with a vengeance. Voices twisted within the confines of his head until he could do nothing but let out an ear splitting groan. All evidence pointed to the girl being the child of Padmé Skywalker but she couldn't be. This had to all be some sort of trick. If the child had survived then Padmé, his angel, his life, must have as well. But then why did she not contact him? Why let him suffer?

Lor had sensed the dark lord even before she had heard the ominous sound of his respirator, but she did not move. She was too close to her quarry; to close to the truth. What would she say to Ben or to Luke if she failed? And what about her father all alone? It wouldn't be fair to him either.

Vader was known for killing Jedi and their was no possible way for her to beat him in a lightsaber duel. Uncle Ben had always said that her saber skills weren't near what they should be. She always thought it didn't matter, but how wrong she was. Now what she never cared to learn would wind up killing he. Great.

She felt him staring at her and she stared back. It was impossible not to. He was supposed to be evil incarnate but she felt he was something different. Maybe the physical embodiment of tragedy, but not completely evil. No, not completely.

Lor could not see his face behind the dark mask but she could feel the emotion coming off him in waves. Confusion. Anger. Hatred. Sorrow. Pain. Guilt. All of it swirling in his helmed brain so fast and with so much velocity that she was surprised he wasn't constantly living with a concussion. What a truly pitiful man (machine?).

The child used Vader's momentary distraction to take off. A sudden Force powered sprint and a quick leap into the nearest ventilator shaft was the only available escape. It wasn't the same shaft she had used to get into this mess, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

Within moments of entering Lor found her path blocked by a large portion of the temple's wall. Apparently it didn't matter to the storm troopers who destroyed the temple, what was hit. It would be impossible for her to go back the way she came without getting killed.

The thought caused crumpled to the floor. She was facing death for the second time today. She clutched for her mother's necklace but the trinket wasn't there. Where was it? Where had she dropped it? Lor silently prayed it wasn't in the hands of that monster. It wasn't his; he had no right to taint the closest thing her mother had ever had to a wedding band. The necklace was sacred and like he did with everything sacred, he'd probably crush it for fun.

Suddenly there was an ear splitting groan. Some thing was causing the dark lord unbelievable agony. Had Ben come to save her?

"Come out child or I will tare this temple apart brick by brick until I find you."

"Your master wouldn't be too pleased with you for that, now would he? If he wanted this monument to his power destroyed he would have done so long ago. Perhaps by allowing you to defile it as your blade struck down those who once called you friend. It would have saved the fuel it took you to get here today." She shouted out of the shaft. Perhaps it was not wise to further anger such a strong opponent but if she was to die anyway then it didn't matter.

"Insolent brat!"

"I know. I know. It's the whole 'come out with your hands up' bit. I don't have much choice do I? I'm stuck here. So here's the deal Vader, you tell your little toy solders to stay out of it and I'll come out and fight you. I have no disillusions about wining but I'll not die on my knees."

"I will decide how you die." He snarled.

"Even you're not that powerful Vader. Maybe once but not now. Not even you have power over fate or I take it you would not be so confined to the suite."

"Enough with this mindless chatter. You have your wish. The troopers will stand down."

With a few hesitant steps Lor exited her tinny bastion and went to face her immanent death with as much grace as she could muster. She would not let the sadistic bustard see just how frightened she truly was. They had called her father the 'hero with no fear,' and she would be damned if she went down letting the enemy see even the slightest tremor in her.

The moment Lormé was safely away from the ventilation shaft Vader used the force to collapse what remained of it in onto itself.

"Should have seen that one coming." She muttered.

"Where did you get this?" Vader roared, holding the broken cord of her mother's necklace in his fast.

"Why do you care?" She snarled back at him. This was hers and he had no right.

"Just answer the question." Vader was getting impatient but Lor didn't care, this was something she refused to share.

"It's none of you're business." She shot back.

"Just answer the question!" The room around them started to shake with his anger. A few stones fell from the ceiling, one even landed on a storm trooper's head knocking him out.

"It was my mothers." She whispered in defeat.

"Where is she!" Vader grabbed the child by the throat and lifted her off the ground when she refused to answer.

"Not…faire…" Lor managed to whisper. The words immediately caused the Sith to drop the child.

"Not far?" He was hopeful, it was impossible to hide.

"I said not faire. As in you said I would at least get a chance to defend my self and then you automatically go for the Force choke. Again I say not faire."

"Life isn't faire."

"Don't I know it." Lor muttered with a hint of sadness. That had been one of the lesions she had learned the most in her young life. People died when they didn't disserve to. Children went without parents. The segregation between humans and non-humans. And so much more robbed life of any semblance of equality.

"Where is she?" He demanded again.

"Dead." Lor whispered.

"You lie!" Vader accused.

"Lie? Why would I lie? I saw her swallow the blaster muzzle herself, two years ago!" Lor didn't know what made her say it. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Padmé had just gotten sick and had not been able to beat it. She hadn't had the strength. Besides, even if she had killed herself she would have made damn sure Lor at least didn't see.

The anguish that the words caused Vader confused Lor. Why should he care?

"Then what were you doing in the temple?" Lor had not thought It possible because of the respirator and vocalizeer, but his voice seemed soft, almost as if he were still recovering from the shattering of a briefest moment of hope.

"I wanted to see if I could find my father." So much of her mission had already been revealed, it wouldn't hurt to give him this single bit of information.

"Anakin Skywalker?" He guessed, his voice slightly fearful.

"Yes." Her voice was full of pride. Her mother and Ben must not have been exaggerating if even Vader was afraid of him.

"I knew that name once, long ago." The dark lord almost whispered.

"Did you kill him?" The hatred in her voice was palatable and oddly, he didn't find it as sweet as he should have.

"That's one way of looking at it."

"You-" She snarled, igniting her lightsaber.

"I was him." The words forced her to take a step backwards. It cant' be. It can't be.

"Liar. You lie. You lie. It can't be true. It can't be." She whispered.

"Search your feelings. It is the truth!"

"Liar." She shouted one last time before attempting to bolt over a set of shelves. Lor would not stand there and listen to his twisted lies no matter how much the force told her they were merely unbearable truths. She would not let him strip everything from her as he had did her mother. Even death would be kinder then that.

The girl was so caught up in her denial that she did not hear Vader give a single order to the troopers nor did she hear the whine of a blaster till the bolt hit her in the back. Stunned and unconscious she fell back, down… down into oblivion. She did not hit the cold hard stone of the temple floor. She hit the cold hard metal of Vader's arms. The gesture was almost kind but of course that was something Vader could never be.


End file.
